I STILL DREAM OF ORGONON

This is Useful to Remember

Sort of the flipside to this. It’s also worth remembering that if you do decide to attend an argument, you don’t have to stay until the end; you can get out early, before everyone else is rushing for the door.

14 thoughts on “This is Useful to Remember”

Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of people who think they’ve won an argument when they’ve driven away anyone who disagrees with them. I used to stick around for the twisted entertainment value of seeing just how much they’d foam at the mouth and which rhetorical devices they’d use to dismiss anything that undercut their illusions, but I’m less likely to do that these days.

The fact that the power structure largely depends on people like that nowadays is too depressing.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of people who think they’ve won an argument when they’ve driven away anyone who disagrees with them.

I completely agree. That’s why I try to stay away from places where that behavior is possible. You know what I really, really like about this place: our host isn’t afraid to intervene when people start being obnoxious.

But if I don’t let them know how totally awesome, intelligent, and generally spectacular I am then they will never know. They will continue on in their pig-headedness. I as a good, actually great, person cannot in good conscience let that continue.

Making good arguments is vital towards personal, social and civic growth. To argue is to make an argument but argument does not mean somebody is right (or wrong) beside you in disagreement; moreover and contrary to long-standing popular belief, you can never be “in” an argument (actually you can put your name in an argument but not your actual physical being), you can only make them because arguments are statements, in statements and of statements, not fights or debates. You can argue ~for~ or ~against~ anything at anytime, most in particular your own beliefs, thoughts and opinions. I take personal offense to this misconception of argument, not on behalf or the person but on behalf of society, because it both directly and indirectly encourages people to run away from their differences with other people but more in particular it’s a corruption of a very important word which will corrupt posterity by encouraging people around you to remain ignorant about not only (the validity of) their own beliefs, thoughts and opinions but other people’s beliefs thoughts and opinions as well.

If you really do not like disagreeing with other people then it is vital that you learn how to better express your beliefs which can only be down through arguing. If anyone disagrees with me then you’d only be fighting over what an argument actually is/means and from that perspective there is no practical reason to have that battle — there is nothing be gained from that end of it — and more importantly history stretches farther back in favor of the definition I’m bringing forward. I hope this encourages you to learn more about what exactly an argument is and why you should like making them because they have helped forged the greatness of society more than even every science put together.

The terms “argument” and “debate” have very different connotations to me, with the former being much closer to “quarrel” than “discussion over different beliefs.” Passionately debating a side = good; just arguing with somebody = a waste of time. It seems that this post-it advice is regarding that negative quarreling and squabbling versus what secobi is talking about.

(High school policy debater chiming in; the best debaters have to be careful about word choice!)

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